Backrest Chair B40 | Original Bauhaus Model

The B40 is defined by small details that transform its cubic shape into elegance.

Here, the geometry follows the body. At lumbar height, the backrest bends slightly backward and curves outward, making the chair easy to carry. The double bracing at the front may not be structurally necessary, but it is highly aesthetic: it stiffens the chair and creates a rhythm in the room, as if Breuer had created crystalline music here—and not a chair with great practical value.

With his ingenious idea of applying the lightweight construction of bicycles to furniture design, Marcel Breuer (1902—1981) opened up entirely new possibilities for the furniture industry. “My sudden idea, which came to me while cycling as I thought about the material of the bicycle handlebars and how it could be used to construct tubular furniture—quite unexpectedly, it spread throughout the world,” Marcel Breuer wrote in 1937. His tubular steel furniture became the epitome of the elegance and lightness of a world in the midst of change—and one that has much in common with our own. You can physically experience this impulse in the B40.